1. Educational policies
In the European Union education is the responsibility of Member States; European Union institutions play a supporting role. According to Art. 149 of the Treaty of Amsterdam, the Community “…shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States…”, through actions such as promoting the mobility of citizens, designing joint study programmes, establishing networks, exchanging information or teaching languages of the European Union. The Treaty also contains a commitment to promote life-long learning for all citizens of the Union.
The European Union's interest in Education policy developed after the Lisbon summit in March 2000, at which the EU's Heads of State and Government asked the Education Ministers of the EU to reflect on the "concrete objectives" of education systems with a view to improving them . The European Commission and the European Union's Member States worked together on a report for the Spring 2001 European Council , and in 2002 the Spring Summit approved their joint work programme showing how they proposed to take the report's recommendations forward. Since then they have published a series of "Joint Reports" every other year .
The first European Union exchange programmes were the COMETT Programme for Industry-University links and exchanges, launched in 1987 (and discontinued in 1995); the Erasmus university exchange programme was launched in the same year. Similar programmes have been running ever since, and as from 2007 all the education and training programmes were brought together in one single programme - the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007-2013 . The Lifelong Learning programme comprises separate sub-programmes for schools, universities and higher education, vocational education and training, adult education, teaching about the EU in universities and a 'horizontal' programme for policy development.
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